Open API Analyzers & Conventions

Problem

Let’s start with an example to understand problem. Check the following code:

API method that can be returned 404 that is not documented

Above API is looking in swagger-ui like following:

Undocumented API method

As you can see, there is no information that 404 can return, even though method has a NotFound() method. We can only see info that we request to method with id that is not exist.

404 with undocumented

When we request to API with not existing product, it returns 404 with un documented warning.

Detect Problem: Analyzers

Analyzers work with controllers annotated with ApiController introduced in ASP.NET Core 2.1.0, while building on API conventions that is released in ASP.NET Core 2.2.0. To start using this, install the package:

Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Api.Analyzers

You should see this as warnings (squiggly lines) highlighting return types that aren’t documented as well as warnings in the output. In Visual Studio, this should additionally appear under the “Warnings” tab in the “Error List” dialog. You now have the opportunity to address these warnings using code fixes. Let’s look at the analyzer in action.

Before adding analyzer:

Before adding analyzer

After adding analyzer:

After adding analyzer

The analyzer identified that the action returned a 404 but did not document it using a ProducesResponseTypeAttribute. It’s a great way to identify areas of your application that are lacking swagger documentation and correct it.

Fix the Problem

Adding ProducesResponseTypeAttribute will fix the problem. Check the code:

Adding ProducesResponseTypeAttribute will fix the problem.

After adding above attribute, let’s check swagger-ui again:

swagger-ui

We know the method can return 404 response. It is documented now.

Conventions

From MSDN: If your controllers follows some common patterns, e.g. they are all primarily CRUD endpoints, and you aren’t already using ProducesResponseType or Produces to document them, you could consider using API conventions. Conventions let you define the most common “conventional” return types and status codes that you return from your action, and apply them to individual actions or controllers, or all controllers in an assembly. Conventions are a substitute to decorating individual actions with ProducesResponseType attributes.

By default, ASP.NET Core MVC 2.2 ships with a set of default conventions — DefaultApiConventions – that’s based on the controller that ASP.NET Core scaffolds. If your actions follow the pattern that scaffolding produces, you should be successful using the default conventions.

There are 3 ways to apply a convention to a controller action:

Applying the ApiConventionType attribute as an assembly level attribute. This applies the specified convention to all controllers in an assembly.

Using the ApiConventionType attribute on a controller.

Using ApiConventionMethod. This attributes accepts both the type and the convention method.

Authoring conventions

You can write your own conventions. Define a static class to define rules.